Prowers County – Six people, including two teenagers, were killed and another teenager was critically injured Thursday when a freight train slammed into their SUV on a rural southeastern Colorado road.
At least four of the victims were related, and all of them were from the south Texas town of Harlingen or towns nearby, Colorado State Patrol officials said.
The victims were identified as Melissa Resendez, 23, of Combes, Texas; Ventura Becerra, 26, of Harlingen; and Francisco Perez Jr., 36, Cristela Rios, 36, Bud Cruz, 13, and Harley Rios, 14, all from Donna, Texas.
The driver of the vehicle, Christopher Cruz, 15, also of Donna, was the lone survivor from the SUV and was in critical condition at Denver Health Medical Center, State Patrol officials said. Officers said they didn’t believe Cruz had a valid driver’s permit.
All the victims were migrant workers and part of a larger group of friends and relatives from the Harlingen area, near the southernmost tip of Texas, who come to the area each spring to plant onions, said Jose Resendez, the brother of Melissa Resendez.
Melissa Resendez “had a good heart; she was always happy and she always believed in angels,” Jose Resendez, 24, said. “God bless her.”
Cristela Rios was the mother of Bud Cruz, Harley Rios and Christopher Cruz, authorities said.
The crash happened shortly before 10:30 a.m. about 2 miles west of the town of Granada, which is 170 miles southeast of Denver near the Kansas border.
The red Ford Explorer was traveling north on County Road 22.5 when it was struck on the passenger side by the westbound train.
The train came to a controlled stop a quarter of a mile away. Neither of its two crew members was injured.
The crossing had a sign but no blinking lights to warn of an oncoming train.
State Patrol officials were investigating whether the Explorer’s radio was playing so loudly that the driver might not have heard the train coming.
Resendez said authorities told him they also were looking into the possibility that the Explorer stalled on the tracks.
Christopher Cruz and Harley Rios, who was seated in the rear of the vehicle, survived the initial impact, and they were flown by helicopter to Denver Health, said a spokeswoman at Prowers Medical Center in Lamar. Rios later died at the hospital, authorities said.
Victims were on the move
The workers were getting ready to move from their temporary home in the area and travel to Denver when the crash happened, family and friends said.
A friend of the deceased from Combes, Aurora Tijerias, 25, said those who died were new to onion planting and were moving because the work proved to be too backbreaking.
“It was very hard work for them,” Tijerias said. “You bend down for as much as nine hours straight working on a row that’s half-a-mile long.”
Jose Resendez said he was working in a field about a mile away and could hear the loud bang of the collision. He said he heard the train whistle going off for 10 minutes after the crash. He didn’t know what had happened until a relative in Texas called him.
A tow-truck driver who responded said rock ‘n’ roll was still blaring from the crushed Explorer’s radio after the crash, and bodies were strewn everywhere. The Explorer came to rest on its roof, and the ceiling of the SUV was soaked in blood, he said.
Eric Jensen, co-owner of Jensen Farms near Granada, was one of the first people to arrive at the scene.
The driver was the only one still showing signs of life, he said. Also, it appeared the driver was the only one wearing a seat belt and was still strapped into it and hanging from the seat when help arrived, Jensen said.
“The driver’s face was scratched up and he had a bloody nose, but otherwise didn’t appear to be seriously injured,” Jensen said. The driver stepped out of truck on own his power and lay on the ground, Jensen said.
Four of the seven people in the SUV were ejected, authorities said. Food was scattered across the crash site.
The coroner found a receipt in the vehicle and evidence that indicated the group stopped about 30 minutes before the crash at a Wal-Mart in Lamar and purchased food for the trip, he said.
There was one body 20 feet from the truck, and then there were three bodies anywhere from 100 to 150 feet from the truck, Jensen said.
Jensen said he recognized the workers because they had been employed at his farm for a couple of days.
Bill Grasmick, co-owner of Grasmick Inc., which employs up to 250 people to work on farms in the area, said the group also worked for him. They came to his office last week and said they had experience planting onion seedlings, he said
But after one day of work, “it was apparent they didn’t,” Grasmick said.
Workers are paid a base rate on the number of seedlings they plant, he said, and the family members were not planting fast enough to earn minimum wage. Some workers, he said, can plant fast enough to earn the equivalent of $15 an hour.
He said the family had been looking for part-time work to earn gas money.
The accident was “just horrible,” he said. “We’re very saddened by it. It’s just a tragic accident.”
No lights or gates
The train originated in Kansas City, Kan., and was headed to California, said Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railroad spokeswoman Lena Kent. The crew requested emotional-trauma relief, and another crew was brought in to take the train to its destination, Kent said.
The train was 6,431 feet long and was a mostly empty freighter with two locomotives, Kent said.
The speed limit for trains in the area is 55 mph, Kent said.
“We operate approximately six trains within a 24-hour period through this area,” Kent said.
The state Colorado Department of Transporation determines what equipment will go in at a crossing on public land, but private landowners determine what kind of sign will be posted if it goes through private property, Kent said.
In 2002, the Denver Post reported that about 20 percent of the 3,270 railroad tracks that cross streets and highways throughout Colorado have no warning signs, lights or gates; 653 of the street- level crossings are not equipped with any type of warning device. Of those, 565 are on private land, according to CDOT. Just 12 percent of all crossings have safety gates, and only 7.5 percent have flashing lights.
